Modern motor vehicles not only have to meet high expectations in terms of road performance (such as acceleration, maximum speed) and driving comfort (such as noise, vibration, and harshness behavior, NVH) but also in terms of the efficient use of resources available to the drive, in particular fuel consumption. In conventional motor vehicles, during non-negligible periods of time, the drive motor, frequently a combustion engine including a reciprocating piston, is operated in unfavorable ranges of operation; moreover, in particular during braking operations, energy that has previously been invested in driving the motor vehicle is mainly converted into heat that has no further use. In the last few years, the demand for a more efficient use of the fuel in particular to increase either traction power or mileage has led to the development of drive trains for motor vehicles that include several different driving engines. Motor vehicles that have such drive trains are commonly referred to as hybrid vehicles. The drive trains of these motor vehicles are frequently able to regain braking energy and to make it available to the drive of the vehicle. In addition, these drive trains frequently allow a shifting of the operating point of at least one driving engine, thus allowing a more efficient operation of the motor vehicle.
These requirements give rise to new requirements in particular in terms of the distribution of torques and power within these new drive trains. The distribution of torque and power is generally achieved by torque transmission devices. Although the number of functions that drive trains of such hybrid vehicles have to perform has increased, the installation space provided for them has not increased to the same degree. This means that modern drive trains frequently require torque transmission devices that incorporate many different functions in a comparatively small installation space yet with a high degree of operational reliability.
German Patent Document DE 100 36 504 A1 discloses to integrate a torque damper device, here a torsional vibration damper, and a torque transmission device, here a clutch, into a stator of an electro-mechanical energy converter in a drive train of a motor vehicle. The torque damper device is received radially inside the torque transmission device. The torque transmission device may be used to control whether power is transmitted to the driving wheels of the motor vehicle from a combustion engine or from an electromechanical energy converter. Due to the nested arrangement of the torque damper device and the torque transmission device in the electromechanical energy converter, the torque transmission device requires little installation space.